Monday, July 3, 2017

FINAL FLIGHT DELAYED
by Beverly Koepplin

For eight days she laid in the hospital bed.
Eight days of her life went missing in that stillness.
If she moved, she does not remember.
If she shed tears or laughed, she does not remember.

Her watchers said sometimes her eyelids flickered,
And one of her thin hands 
moved restlessly across her body.
Otherwise, like a cocoon, she laid there 
waiting for life to come,
Not even knowing she was waiting, just being.

On the ninth day, she woke up, facing the window
where a tree bloomed against a beautiful blue sky
and the light was so bright it hurt her reborn eyes,
but her room was strangely dim 
and the air smelled stale.

She turned her head to find she was not alone.
A flock of angels crowded around the foot of her bed.
She thought “this is the end, my time has come”,
and she gazed at their hands 
outstretched to beckon her  on.

Half rising, she looked closer at the host of angels.
Their halos were crumpled tin foil 
their wings made of thunder clouds.
She stopped moving in her bed 
and pointed her finger back at them.
“Leave.  Hell already has enough people.  
I  am not going today.”

On the tenth day, my friend told me this story
and, with a quirky smile that lit up her wan face
and spoke to the sense of humor 
she had had all of her life,
added  that she guessed
her final flight had been delayed
                                  ***

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